Men prepare bacon at a meat packing plant in Chicago, circa 1955

Why Does Meatpacking Have Such Bad Working Conditions?

In the long time between The Jungle and today, meatpacking has changed—first for the better, due to strong unions, then for the worse.
A series of torn up academic papers against a blue background

Preprints, Science, and the News Cycle

Preprints are academic papers that haven't been peer-reviewed yet. When preprints make news, that's often overlooked.
Girls' Beating the Bounds' at a fence near St Albans in Hertfordshire, 1913

“Beating the Bounds”

How did people find out where their local boundaries were before there were reliable maps?
Thomas Edison's 1896 silent film "The Kiss" featuring May Irwin and John C. Rice.

The First Movie Kiss

The public fascination was so intense that fans soon started demanding live reenactments.
An illustration of the coronavirus in front of a strand of DNA

Can We Protect Against Coronavirus by Rewriting Our Genomes?

Genome recoding could offer new modes of virus resistance, but the technology raises serious ethical concerns.
Children playing ring around the rosie

The Linguistics of Cooties (and Other Weird Things Kids Say)

The game of cooties lets children learn about the idea of contagion, but kid culture and wordplay aren't meant for adults.
A Canada Goose

Has the U.S. Government Abandoned Birds?

Recent changes to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 leave birds vulnerable to industry, experts say.
UK research organisation Mass-Observation conducts a survey at the Nuffield Centre, a Service Club in Soho, to find out the preferred 'pin-up girl' of a number of servicemen, September 1944.

Yes, Mass Observation Still Wants to Know about Your Life

The organization has collected interviews and diaries recording ordinary life in Britain over the course of decades. A pandemic won't stop it now.
Hero shrew

Shrew Spines, COVID Mysteries, and Pandemic Poverty

Well-researched stories from CNN, the New York Times, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
WPA bookmobile

How Reading Got Farm Women Through the Depression

They worked over sixty hours a week but were also insatiable readers.